8th class

Sports

California Connection:

Achievements:

At the time he retired, no NBA player had ever scored more
points, blocked more shots, won more MVP Awards, or played in
more All-Star Games than Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

Born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr., he played for John Wooden’s
Bruins at UCLA, where he was named outstanding player in the NCAA
Tournament in 1967, 1968 and 1969. First pick in the 1969 NBA
draft, he was Rookie of the Year. With him at center, the
Milwaukee Bucks won the championship the next year, and led the
division for four straight seasons. In 1975 he joined the
last-place Los Angeles Lakers, and started a turnaround that took
them to the conference finals the next season. Abdul-Jabbar and
Magic Johnson teamed up to make the Lakers one of the most
dominant teams of the 1980s, appearing in the finals eight times
and winning five championships. On April 5, 1984, with his
trademark skyhook, Abdul-Jabbar scored career point 31,420,
passing Wilt Chamberlain as the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. He
retired in 1989 with 38,387 points, a record that has never been
matched.

Abdul-Jabbar has written several books, worked as a coach and
broadcaster, fought hunger and illiteracy, and served as a U.S.
global cultural ambassador.

Awards/Recognition:

Civil Rights Advocate

(1874-1969)

California Connection:

Moved to California in 1912, and resided in Los Angeles until her
death

Achievements:

Charlotta Bass was a civil rights activist who in 1912 became the
first African-American woman to own and operate a newspaper in
the United States and who in 1952 became the first to be
nominated for Vice President of the United States.

During the 1920s, Bass became co-president of the Los Angeles
chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. She
formed the Home Protective Association to fight against housing
covenants that prevented people of color from buying homes and
helped found the Industrial Business Council, which fought
discrimination in employment and encouraged black people to go
into business.

Bass used her position as editor and publisher of the California
Eagle, the oldest black newspaper on the West Coast, to fight
segregation in housing and schools. She campaigned to end
race-based job discrimination at the Los Angeles General
Hospital, the Los Angeles Rapid Transit Company, the Southern
Telephone Company and the Boulder Dam Project.

In the 1940s, the Republican Party chose Bass as western regional
director for its nominee’s presidential campaign. Three years
later, she became the first African-American grand jury member
for the Los Angeles County Court.

As the first African-American woman to run for Vice President of
the United States, Bass called for civil rights, women’s rights,
an end to the Korean War and peace with the Soviet Union. Bass’s
slogan during her campaign was, “Win or lose, we win by raising
the issues.”

Film

(Born 1939)

California Connection:

Graduated from UCLA, now lives in the Napa Valley

Achievements:

Francis Coppola ranks as one of the leading motion picture
directors of the 20th century. After graduating from UCLA’s
prestigious film program, he made his directorial debut with
You’re a Big Boy Now (1966) and followed it with the
musical Finian’s Rainbow (1968). Shortly after, he
gained critical acclaim and won an Oscar for his original
screenplay for Patton (1970). However, it was The
Godfather (1972), which he directed and co-wrote, that
brought him lasting fame. Consistently ranked among the world’s
best films, it transformed the gangster genre of movie-making and
was for a time the highest grossing picture ever made. The
sequel, The Godfather Part II (1974), cemented Coppola’s
position as one of Hollywood’s top directors and made him the
second director to win three Academy Awards for the same film.
Both films were selected for inclusion in the National Film
Registry. Other acclaimed films include Apocalypse Now
(1979) and The Conversation (1974).

In 1969 Coppola co-founded with George Lucas an award-winning
film production studio in San Francisco, American Zoetrope, which
is now owned by Coppola’s son and daughter. Today, Coppola is
less involved in the film industry and instead focuses much of
his time on his various business ventures including wineries,
resorts, a cafe and a literary magazine.

Literature

(Born 1934)

California Connection:

Fifth-generation Californian, lived in Southern California for 25
years

Achievements:

One of America’s leading authors since the 1960s, Didion has
achieved that rare combination of critical acclaim and wide
popularity. Her spare and carefully crafted prose, which explores
contradictions and seeks truths beyond the accepted mythology of
the state, has defined California to readers around the world.
Her later essays have explored universal themes of life, love and
loss.

Didion was born and raised in Sacramento. After graduating from
UC Berkeley, Didion won Vogue Magazine’s prestigious
Prix de Paris student writing contest and worked as an editor at
the magazine for seven years. Her first book of essays,
Slouching TowardsBethlehem (1968) brought her
into the national spotlight. Today she is the author of five
novels, nine nonfiction books, screenplays, and many articles for
magazines such as the New Yorker and the New York
Review of Books. Her book meditating on the death of her
husband, The Year of Magical Thinking, won the 2005
National Book Award and spent over 24 weeks on the New York
Times bestseller list.

Awards/Recognition:

National Book Award

National Medal of Arts and Humanities

National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished
Contribution to American Letters

Activism

(1910-1992)

California Connection:

Born in San Francisco, CA

Achievements:

Fred Ross, Sr. was a trailblazer for social justice. His activism
began in the late 1930s, when as a manager of one of California’s
migratory worker camps, he organized Dust Bowl refugees, helping
them form camp councils and achieve self-governance. He was the
only camp manager to challenge racial segregation.

During WWII he and his wife moved to Cleveland, where he helped
Japanese Americans find jobs and housing upon their release from
the internment camps. After the war, in Orange County, Ross
organized parents to fight segregation in the local schools. Some
of them sued the school district and won, and their case, Mendez
vs. Westminster, laid the groundwork for the U.S. Supreme Court’s
landmark decision in Brown vs. Board of Education.

In 1947, Ross founded the Community Service Organization, which
gave a young César Chàvez his first training in organizing. In
1966, Chavez recruited Ross to become the Organizing Director for
the United Farm Workers Union (UFW). There, he trained more than
two thousand organizers, whose efforts helped tens of thousands
of farm workers gain better wages, health care and safer working
conditions.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, Ross worked in the Yaqui Indian
community in Arizona, on the Robert F. Kennedy presidential
campaign and with the United Farm Workers. In the 1980s, he
fought for justice and peace in Central America. His influence
continues to be felt today in the ongoing work of the thousands
of leaders and organizers he trained.

Science

(1945-2010)

California Connection:

Served on the faculty of Stanford University from 1992 – 2010

Achievements:

One of the world’s top climatologists, Stephen Schneider took a
leading role in educating the public about the role of greenhouse
gas emissions in global warming and in promoting a switch to
clean energy.

In hundreds of scientific papers and books, Schneider wrote on
the effects of climate change on areas as diverse as politics and
wildlife. He advised the administration of every president from
Richard Nixon to Barack Obama. As a member of a United Nations
panel on climate change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize
with former Vice President Al Gore, he helped write papers that
were influential in framing the climate-change discussion.

Schneider was the founder and editor of the journal Climatic
Change. He was Professor of Environmental Biology and Global
Change at Stanford University, a Co-Director at the Center for
Environment Science and Policy of the Freeman Spogli Institute
for International Studies and a Senior Fellow in the Stanford
Woods Institute for the Environment. He also served as Chair of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Section
on Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences.

Awards/Recognition:

Humanitarism

(Born 1942)

California Connection:

Has lived in California for 50 years, earned Master’s and
Doctorate from UC Berkeley

Achievements:

Mimi Silbert is co-founder, president and CEO of the Delancey
Street Foundation, a residential educational community that
serves ex-felons, prostitutes, substance abusers, and others who
have hit bottom. Silbert and Delancey Street have been called
“pioneers of social entrepreneurship.” Headquartered in San
Francisco, the foundation includes five additional locations
nationwide. For 43 years, at no cost to the client or taxpayer,
Delancey Street has provided residents with academic, vocational,
and social skills, along with the discipline and values they need
to live successfully in society. There are currently over 18,000
successful graduates.

Although Delancey Street is her primary life work, Silbert is
also a recognized national expert in criminal justice. She has
been appointed to the National Institute of Justice by President
Carter, to the California Board of Corrections by every Governor
from Governor Deukmejian through Governor Schwarzenegger, to the
State Advisory Group on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency, to the
Blue Ribbon Commission on Inmate Population Management by the
State Legislature, to the Expert Panel on Corrections, and to the
State Police Officers Standards and Training Advisory Commission.

Entertainment

(Born 1965 & 1953)

California Connection:

Young was born in Los Angeles; both Young & Iovine reside there.

Achievements:

Born Andre Young but better known by his stage name, Dr. Dre
changed the world of music as a key figure in one of the
most-revolutionary groups of all-time: N.W.A. At the heart of
N.W.A was Dr. Dre’s innovative production, a dense but funky
beatscape that became the foundation of a new genre of music:
gangsta rap. Dr. Dre brought hip-hop into the mainstream with his
first solo album, which went triple platinum and earned him a
Grammy. Dre later discovered and nurtured some of the top
rappers, including Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and 50 Cent, becoming the
first hip-hop producer to win a Grammy for Producer of The
Year.

Jimmy Iovine got his start as a studio go-fer in the 1970s, but
quickly made his name as an engineer and producer. In 1990 he
co-founded Interscope Records, which became the hottest label of
the decade by betting on gangsta rap acts, including Dr. Dre. He
was longtime chairman of Universal Music Group’s Interscope
Records, where he guided the careers of U2 and Eminem.

In 2006, Young and Iovine teamed up to launch the immensely
successful Beats Electronics, with its popular “Beats By Dr. Dre”
headphone line. The company, which branched out into streaming
media with Beats Music, was acquired by Apple in 2014. In 2013
Young and Iovine, neither of whom attended college, donated $70
million to the University of Southern California to establish the
USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Techology
and the Business of Innovation, a new degree program that blends
business, marketing, product development, design and liberal
arts. Part of the endowment includes full scholarships to help
disadvantaged students.